This book studies the impact of violence on the writing of the Romantic period. The focus is on the response of writers to a series of violent events including the revolutions in America and France and the Irish rebellion of 1798. Authors covered include Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron, Fennimore Cooper, Equiano, and Helen Maria Williams.

'Bloody Romanticism refreshingly resituates Romanticism in the global theater of revolution, warfare and slavery from which it originally emerged. Through a series of compelling readings of key literary texts, it offers the reader a view of Romanticism in which uprisings, executions and massacres displace waterfalls, cliffsides and daffodils as the crucial reference points of the imaginary landscape at the end of the eighteenth century.' - Professor Saree Makdisi, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

'While the nature of the subject matter means that this book is never an entirely relaxing read, Bloody Romanticism demonstrates that the tropes of spectacular violence were woven deeply into the fabric of all modes of popular print culture...The discourse of these bloody vignettes helps to advance, if not to complete, our capacity to understand.' - Jonathon Shears, Review of English Studies

'Where Haywood excels is in his ability to draw out the textual and ideological complexitites of popular Romanticism.' - Philip Shaw, British Association for Romantic Studies

'Haywood's book covers an astonishing range of ground... opens up a new perspective on Romanticism.' - Scott Hess, European Romantic Review

Autorentext
IAN HAYWOOD is Reader in English at Roehampton University, London, UK. His publications include The Revolution in Popular Literature: Print, Politics and the People, 1790-1860 (2004), Romantic Period Writings, 1798-1832: An Anthology (1998), co-edited with Zachary Leader, and numerous articles and essays on Nineteenth-century radical politics and literature.

Inhalt
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Romantic Agonies 'Beneath the bloody scourge laid bare the man': Slavery and Violence 'Disturbed imagination': The French Revolution 'The most distressful country': The Irish Rebellion of 1798 American 'savagery' Unruly People: The Spectacular Riot Notes Index